But the Supreme Court’s decision is instructive of the state of mind of the ruling elite, not only in Britain but in much of the Western world. The reason given for its ruling was that the safety of the deportees to Rwanda could not be guaranteed, in the sense that they might be returned from the country from which they had fled, or at least from which they had emigrated. It is illegal under international law to return asylum-seekers to their countries of origin before their claims to asylum have been properly heard and investigated, or even to put them at risk of such return. No doubt in some narrow sense, then, the judges were right: They have to interpret the law as it is, not as it ought to be, and (from experience of giving testimony in British courts) I have a high regard for the intellectual ability of British judges.